Technical Field
The present invention relates to a system and method of environmental monitoring capable of detecting and more importantly predicting and preventing exposure to dangerous levels of chemicals, and more particularly to a cognitive system that learns and recognizes patterns and outcomes to predict a chemical exposure, and implements ameliorative actions chosen to reduce, remove, or eliminate exposure risks.
Description of the Related Art
Chemical exposures can induce many forms of damage to a person's health due to acute toxicity, including cancer, respiratory damage, heart damage, liver damage, kidney damage, mutagenic damage, and teratogenic harm. This level of exposure may be reached in typical industrial settings. Dangerous levels of chemical exposure may be generated by production methods, machinery and equipment, cleaning solvents, and chemical reactants in a variety of industries. In various environments, gaseous emissions may be particularly dangerous because they are typically unseen, may be undetectable by smell even at toxic levels, and may fill a large area rapidly. Gaseous emissions may include chemical compounds and hazardous air pollutants (HAP), which may include organic materials and heavy metals. In some cases the chemical compounds and hazardous air pollutants include materials that can build up to toxic levels in a person over time.
Workers may routinely be instructed to wear personal protective equipment that includes breathing apparatus, such as filters, masks, and respirators, but such routine instructions are typically not predictive and do not usually customize the level of protection for the actual worker and the actual environment. Workers may simply ignore such routine instructions, and even if followed may provide under or over protection. It would, therefore, be beneficial to provide a way of ameliorating such exposure risks.